Word Choice QuestionsClose Reading

www.misterconnor.org

Denotation

• A word’s denotation is essentially what the dictionary says the word means.

• Thus:“The denotation of ‘gobble’ is to eat food”“The denotation of ‘swim’ is to move in water by movements of the limbs, fins, tail, etc.”

Connotation

• A word’s connotations are all of the ideas which the word suggests to us.

• Thus:“The connotations of ‘gobble’ are to eat at great speed, greedily and messily”“The connotation of ‘swim’ is to move effortlessly, smoothly or to glide”

• Connotations are not an exact science

Task 1

• For the following words, write down their denotation and connotations.

1. Senile2. Scrawny3. Flee

Word Choice Questions

• For these you must:1. Highlight the word you are referring to.2. Explain its denotation.3. Explain its connotations in this context.

Q1. Explain how the word choice here helps to show that the gancheros’ job is tiring.

• The race towards a rubbish truck as it empties its load at a vast landfill on the edge of a city, hauling away bin liners that overflow with household waste. Their hands are black with dirt and their faces are hidden by headscarves that protect them from the high sun.

Q2. How does the word choice suggest there is a lot of rubbish?

• Among the mounds of refuse, however, are oven trays and paint pots. Cast aside by the two million residents of the capital of Paraguay, they are, nonetheless, highly valued by Nicolas Gomez, who picks them out to make violins and cellos. Gomez, 48, was a carpenter and a ganchero but now works for Favio Chavez, the conductor of Paraguay’s one and only landfill orchestra.

Q3. What does the word choice imply about the environment of the rubbish dump?

• The Cateura Orchestra of the Recycled Instruments is made up of thirty schoolchildren – the sons and daughters of recyclers – whose instruments are forged from the city’s rubbish. And while its members learned to play amid the flies and stench of Cateura, they are now receiving worldwide acclaim, culminating earlier this month with a concert in Amsterdam.

Q4. How does the word choice here give the impression that Gomez is a skilled maker of musical

instruments?

• Gomez travels three times a week to Cateura to dig out material. He shapes the metal oven trays with an electric saw to form the body of a violin and engineers cellos from oil barrels. The necks of his string instruments are sculpted from old strips of word, called pale.

Q5. What does the word choice here show about the parents’ attitudes to their children learning to play

music?

• Many parents also struggle to see the advantages of such an attitude. “Most tell their kids that a violin can’t feed you; that they need to work to eat.” says Jorge Rios, 35, a recycler whose two daughters play in the orchestra. “But thanks to that violin my kids have seen new countries. They have an opportunity for a better future.”

Imagery QuestionsClose Reading

How to…

• 1. State which word or phrase you are referring to, and 2. say what kind of technique is being used.

• 3. Explain what meaning is transferred from the image 4. to the subject.

Example

• Use the four-step analysis for this simile:• “my teacher is like a dragon”.1. In the phrase “my teacher is like a dragon”…2. …the writer uses the simile.3. Just as… a dragon is an angry, aggressive and terrible creature… 4. so… the teacher is just as terrifying.

Warning

• Don’t get side-tracked by tricky vocabulary – zoom in on what you *do* know, not what you *don’t*.

Show how the writer uses imagery to convey how the bat affected the way he thought about himself.

I just slung it over my shoulder like the great weapon it was, my knight's sword. And I felt like some magnificent knight, some great protector of honour and virtue, whenever I walked onto the baseball diamond.

Show how effective you find the writer's use of imagery inmaking her point clear.

The UK is not a group of nations swamped by a tidal wave of immigration. Relatively speaking, Europe contends with a trickle of refugees compared with countries who border areas of famine, desperate poverty, or violent political upheaval.

By referring to one example, show how the writer’simagery conveys the importance of libraries.

I have spent a substantial portion of my life since in libraries, and I still enter them with a mixture of excitement and awe. I am not alone in this. Respect for libraries is as old as writing itself, for a library is more to our culture than a collection of books.

Show how the writer uses imagery to convey the“wonder of the library as a physical space”.

At university, I discovered the wonder of the library as a physical space. Glasgow University has a skyscraper library, built around a vast atrium stretching up through the various floors. Each floor was devoted to a different subject classification. Working away on the economics floor, I could see other students above or below—chatting, flirting, doodling, panicking—all cocooned in their own separate worlds of knowledge. Intrigued, I soon took to exploring what was on these other planets: science, architecture, even a whole floor of novels.

Metaphorical Language Close Reading

What is it?

• Metaphorical language is:• Saying that something is something which

it is not.• Words which use the properties of other

words for effect.• An attempt to give the meaning of one

word to another.

So…

• We might say that “My teacher is a dragon”.1. It is unlikely that your teacher is actually a

dragon.2. We use the word because the teacher and

the dragon have some things in common: fierceness, cruelty, anger, aggression, halitosis…

Questions

• When answering questions on metaphorical language, you must ALWAYS state what the two things have in common.

Example

• Stephen is a Picasso of sarcasm.• Stephen’s ability in sarcasm is being compared to

Picasso.• What do the two have in common?• Enormous ability• Spectacular• Striking• Impressive• Original

How to…

• State which word or phrase you are referring to, and say what kind of technique is being used.

• Explain what meaning is transferred from the image to the subject.

So…

“Stephen is a Picasso of sarcasm.”With reference to the language of this sentence, explain why it is effective.

• The phrase, “Stephen is a Picasso of sarcasm,” is an example of metaphorical language.

• It is effective as it suggests that Stephen’s skills in sarcasm are, like Picasso’s in art, very artistic, imaginative and skilled.

Question 1

• “Sarah is a swimming machine.”• With reference to the language of this

sentence, explain why it is effective.

Question 2

• “They are a footballing Titanic, facing an ice-berg of a fixture.”

• With reference to the language of this sentence, explain why it is effective.

Question 3

• “It is essential not just to know how language looks, but how its bones and sinews work.”

• With reference to the language of this sentence, explain why it is effective.

Question 4

• “J.K. Rowling is a star in the darkness of British children’s writing.”

• With reference to the language of this sentence, explain why it is effective.

Question 5

• “A quick look at the map revealed that St. Kilda is a kind of Scottish Pluto.”

• With reference to the language of this sentence, explain why it is effective.

Sentence Structure QuestionsClose Reading

What is sentence structure?

• Sentence structure is about the way the sentence is constructed.

• It is not focused on the content of the sentence as such.

• To use an analogy, a house’s structure is in its foundations, bricks and construction.

• Its contents will be the furniture and personal possessions.

Brace yourselves.

• Sentence structure questions can be very straight-forward.

• The difficulty comes when we think of how many features there are to sentence structure.

You could comment on…

• Punctuation- Full-stops- Commas- Colons- Semi-colons- Dashes- Apostrophes- Speech marks- Question marks- Exclamation marks- Ellipsis

• Other features- Repetition of words- Repetition of ideas- Parentheses- Anaphora- Tricolon- Thesis/ Antithesis- Anadiplosis- Juxtaposition- Sentence length- Lists/ Congeries- Isocolon

So…

• Full-stops indicate the end of a sentence. This is only of interest to us if the sentence is especially long or especially short.

• Commas are usually only of interest when they separate nouns into a list or congeries.

• Colons always introduce extra information about the thing that has just been mentioned.

• Semi-colons either: divide a list of statements, or link two closely associated ideas.

• Dashes either: create a pause before a final point, or act as parentheses

And on…

• Apostrophes indicate: that a noun belongs to another noun, or that letters have been omitted.

• Speech marks indicate words spoken by a person; or that a phrase is commonly used; or that certain words are a title; or that the writer is using irony.

• Question marks are most commonly used to indicate a rhetorical question in close-reading papers.

• Exclamation marks indicate that words are expressed with intense emotion.

• Ellipsis (pl. ellipses) show that a list or sentence could continue on, or that words have been missed out.

And…

• Parentheses are sections of text marked out from the main body by brackets, dashes or commas. The information they contain is extra, but connected to what has just been mentioned.

• Anaphora is the repetition of words at the start of sentences or clauses to draw emphasis to a specific idea.

• Tricolon is the repetition of a phrase, clause or sentence three times for emphatic effect.

• Antithesis is the statement of the opposing idea to one which has just been used.

• Anadiplosis is the use of the last word of the previous clause/ sentence to begin the next. (Usually in threes.)

And…

• Juxtaposition is the placement of connected ideas close to one another for emphatic effect.

• Minor/ non-sentence are usually very short sentences, employed for effect. (A non-sentence is one with no verb.)

• Isocolon (sometimes called bicolon) is the use of the same grammatical structure twice, in close connection with one another. (“Roses are red, violets are blue.”)

• Short sentences are usually used to create a dramatic impact; this can be to contrast with a previous long sentence, or to draw attention to an essential idea.

• Long sentences are often used to include a large amount of information, a long list or else to create the sensation of speed.

How to…Step one – identify the feature being used, and quote where you find it.

The writer makes use of ellipsis when he writes, “He emptied his bag: knives, blades, guns, hand-grenades, land-mines…”

Step two – say what the effect of the feature is.

This suggests that the list he is using could go on and on.

Step three – say what the wider effect is.

This emphasises that Geoff is a very violent man.

How does the sentence structure of the paragraph suggest that change is inevitable? (2)

The accessibility of affordable smart devices, including phones and tablets, will be transformative in developing countries. Consider the impact of basic mobile phones for a group of African fisherwomen today. Whereas they used to bring their daily catch to the market and watch it slowly spoil as the day progressed, now they keep it on the line, in the river, and wait for calls from customers. Once an order is placed, a fish is brought out of the water and prepared for the buyer. There is no need for an expensive refrigerator, no need for someone to guard it at night, no danger of spoiled fish losing their value (or poisoning customers) and no unnecessary overfishing.

How does the sentence structure of the paragraph make clear what the writer means by “basic-feature

phones”? (2)

Mobile phones are transforming how people in the developing world access and use information, and adoption rates are soaring. There are already 650m mobile phone users in Africa, and close to 3bn across Asia. The majority of these people are using basic-feature phones – voice calls and text messages only – because the cost of data service in their countries is often prohibitively expensive. This will change and, when it does, the smartphone revolution will profoundly benefit these populations.

What is the function of the dash in the paragraph? (2)

By relying on these integrated systems, we’ll be able to use our time more effectively each day –whether that means having a ‘deep think’, spending more time preparing for an important presentation or guaranteeing that a parent can attend his or her child’s football match without distraction.

By referring to tone or to sentence structure in the paragraph, show how you are made aware of how strongly Arberore feels

about the press cuttings. (2)

I showed Arberore, now a student at Middlesex University, some press cuttings on asylum seekers. She was particularly shocked by one headline: A DOOR WE CAN’T CLOSE. She said, “It makes me feel like vermin.” And of another, GET THEM OUT, she demanded. “Who wrote that? It makes me feel as if I’m no-one. I can give something to this country. But I want to say to these reporters we’re all human beings and who knows when British people might need someone’s help? We left everything there, we had a job, a huge house and a garden: we had a nice life. But the most important thing was our freedom."

Show how the sentence structure of the paragraph as a whole emphasizes the idea of changes to London. (2)

You see their traces in the Spitalfields district, where a French Huguenot chapel became, successively, a synagogue and a mosque, tracking the movement of waves of migrants from poverty to suburban comfort. London’s a place without an apparent structure that has proved extraordinarily successful at growing and changing. Its old residential core, sheltering in the approaches to its Tower of London fortress, has made the transition into the world’s busiest banking centre. Its market halls and power stations have become art galleries and piazzas. Its simple terraced streets, built for the clerks of the Great Western Railway in Southall, have become home to the largest Sikh community outside India.

Show how the writer conveys the difficulty of playing video games by his use of sentence structure. (2)

The most powerful example of this trend is found in the world of video games. And the first and last thing that should be said about the experience of playing today’s video games, the thing you almost never hear, is that games are fiendishly, sometimes maddeningly, hard. The dirty little secret of gaming is how much time you spend not having fun. You may be frustrated; you may be confused or disorientated; you may be stuck. But when you put the game down and move back into the real world, you may find yourself mentally working through the problem you have been wrestling with, as though you were worrying a loose tooth.

ContrastsClose Reading

Antonym

• A word that means the opposite.• Suggest antonyms for the following:• Old• Clean• Sunny• Cheerful• Fresh

What is it?

• A contrast is:• Setting opposites next to one another for

effect.• A deliberate juxtaposition of antonyms.

• “Juxtaposition” means “placing next to”.

So…

• We might see something like:• The ancient building stands proud, though

now it is surrounded by state-of-the-art architectural constructions.

• Here, we see the contrast in two types of building: one very old, the other very new. The contrast emphasises this difference between the two.

Questions

• When answering questions on contrasts, you must ALWAYS state what the difference between the antonyms is, and the effect of placing them together.

Example

• The rusting car sits, covered in dents and crusted orange deformities, next to a pristine new Mercedes.

• The concepts to quote are “rusting” and “pristine”.

• By placing the two ideas so close to one another, the newness of one car (and the oldness of the other) becomes clear.

So…

The rusting car sits, covered in dents and crusted orange deformities, next to a pristine new Mercedes.Explain with clear reference to the text how the writer makes successful use of contrasts in these lines.• The word, “rusting” is placed closely to

“pristine” to emphasise the age of one car, and the newness of the other.

Question 1

• “Her face, lined with wrinkles is looking down at the newborn baby, tears forming in her eyes.”

• Explain with clear reference to the text how the writer makes successful use of contrasts in these lines.

Question 2

• “Yesterday, everything was fine. No problems at school. No problems at home. But today, the world has come crashing down.”

• Explain with clear reference to the text how the writer makes successful use of contrasts in these lines.

Question 3

• “The night is pitch black, and it is almost impossible to see, when suddenly, like an explosion, the lights of the car cut through the dark.”

• Explain with clear reference to the text how the writer makes successful use of contrasts in these lines.

Question 4

• “The first track is a jaunty, upbeat number about the perils of love, then the album shifts down a gear as the second track, a mournful, aching account of a break-up, worms its melancholy way into your mind.”

• Explain with clear reference to the text how the writer makes successful use of contrasts in these lines.

Question 5

• “Of course, the real reason why the genius of Shakespeare shines through is because he was surrounded by such mediocre writers.”

• Explain with clear reference to the text how the writer makes successful use of contrasts in these lines.

In Your Own Words QuestionsClose Reading

The questions

• These questions will usually include a phrase such as:

in your own words• Or

using your own words

• These will usually be in bold lettering.

Meaning?• All these questions are a kind of translation.• You have to express the idea in one set of words in a

different set of words.• You may have to:

• Explain what a word or expression in the passage means.

• Explain the main point the writer is making.• Give a reason for something happening in the passage.• Show that you have understood some information in

the passage.

Synonyms

• A synonym is a different word for the same thing.• In your own words questions are made easier if you can think

of synonyms for the words you are describing.• Write down at least one synonym for the following words:

1. Say2. Seat 3. Progress4. Work5. Accommodation6. Picture7. Book

8. Dinner9. Quantity10.Lazy11.Anger12.Sweet

Translate

• “My ambition is to maintain this momentum.”

• “My goal is to keep going like this.”• “My desire is to sustain the speed I have

created.”

Translate

• “We always go out for dinner on Thursday.”

• “We never fail to eat in a Restaurant on the fourth day of the week.”

Translate

• By regularly drinking water, we can avoid passing out in the evening.

Penny Andrews “believes she has proved herself to be the best candidate”. In your own words, explain how the paragraph

illustrates this idea.

Having beaten 200 applicants to the job, she believes she has proved herself to be the best candidate. “Sometimes I feel people think I should be grateful that I have a job but I’m performing a useful task and doing it well, so they should be grateful to me,” she said. “After all, they wanted me badly enough to employ me a month before I had finished my degree.”

What are some of the advantages for companies who hire members of staff with autism? Refer to the paragraph in your

answer, using your own words.

Far from feeling that her diagnosis of Asperger’s is something to be ‘got over’, Andrews maintains it gave her a lead over the other candidates. ‘I’m more focused, intense and honest than a neuro-typical person,’ she said. ‘I do things thoroughly and pay proper attention to detail. I’m always switched on: even when I’m not at work, I’ll go to events that are relevant. Libraries are one of my autistic specialities and I harness that at work.’

In your own words, explain in what ways “there is a lot of ground to make up for” for people with autism in the workplace.

Give evidence from the paragraph to support your answer.

Employers’ attitudes might be changing but there is a lot of ground to make up. Just 15% of those with autism have full-time jobs, according to research by the National Autistic Society (N.A.S.), while 9% work part-time. More than a quarter of graduates with autism are unemployed, the highest rate of any disability group. Nevertheless, employers are increasingly coming round to the arguments that employing those on the spectrum are not about charity or social responsibility but about the empirical benefit of taking on people with unique skills.

Tone QuestionsClose Reading

What is tone?

• Tone is the attitude or emotion behind the words.

• Commonly used tones include: anger, surprise, excitement, casual, sarcasm, criticism, doubt…

• There are hundreds.

How to…

Step one – identify the toneThe writer makes use of a sarcastic tone.

Step two – say which word/s create the tone.He writes, “Yes, giving children poisonous toys is a terrific idea.”

Step three – say how the quoted words create the tone.Clearly, giving children poisonous toys is not a good idea, so by saying the idea is terrific he is being sarcastic – saying the opposite of what he means.

How does the writer establish a tone of surprise in this paragraph? (2)

Twins poo at the same time, who knew? But you have to prioritise the toddlers who are using the loo, as they seem to have some auto-suggestion and need to go as soon as they smell anything that reminds them of a loo. Building in some time to lose track of what you were doing, I’d put this job at an hour, from poo-alert to the second twin getting a fresh nappy.

What tone is created in the first sentence of the final paragraph, and how is this created? (2)

I want to put you through this in real time but I’ve got to pick peas out of the weave of my carpet.

Linking SentencesClose Reading

What is it?

• A linking sentence is one which connects two paragraphs together.

• It indicates a change in the thought-process of the writer.

• Part of the sentence will refer backwards to what has just been discussed, and part of it will link forwards to what the writer is going to discuss next.

So…Pellegrini will step down on June thirty-first, and will be replaced by former Barcelona coach, Pep Guardiola.

The Spaniard, who won fourteen trophies at Barcelona, is expected to bring a specific kind of football to the Etihad.

Explain why the underlined sentence works well as a link at this point in the passage.

• Which words in the sentence link us back to the first paragraph?

• Which words indicate what the writer is going to talk about next?

Questions

• When answering linking-sentence questions, you must always:

1. Quote the word(s) which refers backwards.2. Explain what they are referring to.3. Quote the word(s) which refer forwards.4. Explain what they are referring to.

ExamplePellegrini will step down on June thirty-first, and will be replaced by former Barcelona coach, Pep Guardiola.

The Spaniard, who won fourteen trophies at Barcelona, is expected to bring a specific kind of football to the Etihad.

• “The Spaniard” links to the previous paragraph, which was about who Guardiola is.

• “specific kind of football” indicates the writer is going on to describe the kind of football Guardiola will expect his team to play.

Question 1

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) approved a licence application by a stem cell scientist, to perform genome editing on human embryos.

The decision permits her to study the embryos for fourteen days for research purposes only. After fourteen days…

Explain why the underlined sentence works well as a link at this point in the passage.

Question 2

Research has proven that excess sugar will rot teeth and cause bad breath.

While the risk of teeth falling out is a danger, there is also something even worse we should fear if we don’t brush twice a day.

Explain why the underlined sentence works well as a link at this point in the passage.

Question 3

If Kennedy was not shot from behind, then where did the fatal shot come from?

More than forty witnesses ran towards the grassy knoll, to Kennedy’s front and right…

Explain why the underlined sentence works well as a link at this point in the passage.

Question 4

But there is more to a crossword than simply solving puzzles.

Recent research has shown that regular crossword puzzlers cut their chances of Alzheimer’s by more than eighty per cent…

Explain why the underlined sentence works well as a link at this point in the passage.

Question 5

I love Mars bars. They are delicious. Best chocolate bar ever.

But not everyone likes Mars bars; some people prefer a Twix. A Twix is a bar of chocolate with two parts. Each part has a biscuit bit and a caramel bit.

Explain why the underlined sentence works well as a link at this point in the passage.

Question 6

Stabbed nearly thirty times, it is clear that Caesar had made some enemies.

In the aftermath, while those enemies were hunted down, it was Caesar’s friends who took power in Rome.

Explain why the underlined sentence works well as a link at this point in the passage.